What a quick read. I bought this book eight hours ago at a used book sale and I sure haven’t spent the entire past eight hours reading it. I may have spent four hours total reading this book – that’s probably a generous estimate. This might be the record holder for Book Most Quickly Finished By Stacey Since About Middle School. I would say it almost wasn’t worth me buying it, but then again, I bought it at a used book sale for 50 euro cents, so I won’t say that.

Interpreter of Maladies is a collection of short stories about Indian people in various circumstances and situations. Very good short story writing. I found each of the stories to be kind of sad in their own way, but not depressing enough to make me stop reading or anything. I also thought that each story had some wonderful character development. Lahiri is definitely a talented writer. Anyone who enjoys good short story writing will definitely enjoy this book.

This is the first book I’ve read by Italo Calvino. He’s an extraordinarily talented writer. If on a winter’s night a traveler is one of the most unique books that I’ve read in quite a while, because in it Calvino makes you, the reader, the main character of his book. In traveler Calvino narrates to you your own journey through a world of books that begin but never get past the opening chapter, leaving you in suspense about the problems the characters find themselves in that may, for all you know, never be resolved.

One of my favorite passages in traveler, found in the book’s opening chapter, describes a walk through a bookstore in search of the latest novel by Italo Calvino. As you, the reader and the protagonist, are walking through the bookstore, Calvino describes how you encounter, among other things, the:
Books You Haven’t Read;
Books You Needn’t Read;
Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading;
Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered;
Books Too Expensive Now And You’ll Wait Till They Come Out In Paperback;
Books You’ve Been Planning To Read For Ages;
Books You Want To Own So They’ll Be Handy Just In Case;
and many other species of books. Calvino could be describing me every time I walk into a bookstore or library – and in fact he is, because I, and every other reader of traveler along with me, am the novel’s protagonist.

In traveler, while spinning the complex overarching plot with ten interwoven unique subplots, Calvino comments on writing, time, death, technology, and countless other subjects in brief philosophical musings and paragraphs rich in symbolism. Calvino’s talent as a writer shines through the whole novel. He is, for good reason, one of the most prominent Italian writers of the twentieth century.

Highly recommended.

I read this on my own in high school. A bunch of the other English classes (not mine) were reading it, so I figured why not, I’ll read it too, it’s probably one of those books that you’re “supposed” to read before you graduate high school. I hated it. Didn’t like it at all. I thought it was stupid. I dunno, maybe that’s a side effect of reading it on my own outside of a classroom-discussion setting. Maybe I’ll go back and reread it eventually and see if I like it any better.
...or maybe not.

A good read for anyone interested in Christian ethics. Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran theologian and participant in the resistance movement against Naziism, never finished Ethics; the unfinished pieces of the book were collected published posthumously after he was executed in 1945 for his connections to a failed plot to assassinate Hitler. You’ll get more out of reading the book if you keep the context of his participation in the resistance movement in mind. I didn’t agree with some of what Bonhoeffer talks about in Ethics, probably partly because I’m Catholic and Bonhoeffer was Lutheran and a leader in the Confessing Church, but it was still a good read. I especially enjoyed his chapter on Truth (the last chapter and unfortunately one of the unfinished ones). I recommend Ethics for anyone interested in general Christian, Protestant, and Lutheran theology, as well as anyone curious about the theology and philosophy created by resistance to fascism and Naziism.

I really enjoyed the book. It’s a really light and quick read. Plus it’s set in Botswana. It talked a lot about Africa, and Botswana, and life in Africa, and such things. I think I enjoyed it as much for that stuff as for the actual story line.

Bliss in a jar.

Interesting book. I don’t really agree with him, but the guy has some good points, he’s intelligent, he knows what he’s talking about. A worthwhile read for international affairs nerds like myself.

Finished. Finally. Wow, did this book take me a [relatively] long time to finish.

Basically, Foucault’s Pendulum is what the Da Vinci Code dreams it could be, tried to be, but wimped out and fell short. The Da Vinci Code is like the bastard child of Foucault’s Pendulum that wishes it could have inhereted more talent from its daddy book. Foucault’s Pendulum is probably the ultimate conspiracy theory book.

And what a book. Eco is a great writer, but this is not a book for the faint of heart. He ties so much into his story line that at times- history, philosophy, science, techonology, you name it- that, while reading FP, I felt like I needed to have a dictionary in my lap along with the book and my laptop and Wikipedia handy. Within the first few chapters I came across a handful of (English!) words that I’d never seen before, which doesn’t happen often. Each chapter begins with a quote from a random book. Some books he quotes from are centuries old. Scattered through FP are quotations and anecdotes in Italian (the original language of FP), various Italian dialects, Latin, French, German, and probably some others I’ve forgotten.

Yes, the book is fairly challenging, but if you can handle it, it’s a great read. I found the whole thing totally engrossing. The book goes from funny to sad to unnerving and back again and everywhere in between. Eco builds up the suspense throughout FP till you want to throttle Eco for putting another hundred fifty pages in between you and the ending.

All in all…an awesome book, but like I said, not for the faint of heart. Highly recommended for anyone up for a bit of a challenge.

Very good.
I really recommend reading the entire trilogy – the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paridiso. To anyone who’s only read the Inferno, I really recommend going on through the rest of the trilogy. It’s a great piece of literature and a relatively quick read. Dante’s spiritual musings are insightful and at the very least enjoyable. Not to mention that the Commedia is THE classic piece of Italian literature.

This is definitely one of my favorite books. Definitely top 5, probably top 3. I love the way Kundera mixes philosophical musings in with his story line. I can’t say enough about how much I loved this book. I’ve recommended it to two or three people today alone. I’m sure I’ll be rereading it before the semester ends.